How Deeply Does Your Mutant Sleep? Probing Arousal to Better Understand Sleep Defects in Drosophila

Overview

Journal Sci Rep

Specialty Science

Date 2015 Feb 14

PMID 25677943

Citations 73

Authors

R Faville

B Kottler

G J Goodhill

P J Shaw

B van Swinderen

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The fruitfly, Drosophila melanogaster, has become a critical model system for investigating sleep functions. Most studies use duration of inactivity to measure sleep. However, a defining criterion for sleep is decreased behavioral responsiveness to stimuli. Here we introduce the Drosophila ARousal Tracking system (DART), an integrated platform for efficiently tracking and probing arousal levels in animals. This video-based platform delivers positional and locomotion data, behavioral responsiveness to stimuli, sleep intensity measures, and homeostatic regulation effects - all in one combined system. We show how insight into dynamically changing arousal thresholds is crucial for any sleep study in flies. We first find that arousal probing uncovers different sleep intensity profiles among related genetic background strains previously assumed to have equivalent sleep patterns. We then show how sleep duration and sleep intensity can be uncoupled, with distinct manipulations of dopamine function producing opposite effects on sleep duration but similar sleep intensity defects. We conclude by providing a multi-dimensional assessment of combined arousal and locomotion metrics in the mutant and background strains. Our approach opens the door for deeper insights into mechanisms of sleep regulation and provides a new method for investigating the role of different genetic manipulations in controlling sleep and arousal.

Citing Articles

FlyVISTA, an integrated machine learning platform for deep phenotyping of sleep in .

Keles M, Sapci A, Brody C, Palmer I, Mehta A, Ahmadi S Sci Adv. 2025; 11(11):eadq8131.

PMID: 40073129 PMC: 11900856. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adq8131.

Epg5 links proteotoxic stress due to defective autophagic clearance and epileptogenesis in and Vici syndrome patients.

Deneubourg C, Dafsari H, Lowe S, Martinez-Cotrina A, Mazaud D, Park S Autophagy. 2024; 21(2):447-459.

PMID: 39342484 PMC: 11760255. DOI: 10.1080/15548627.2024.2405956.

Altered circadian rhythm, sleep, and -dependent shade preference during diapause in .

Meyerhof G, Easwaran S, Bontempo A, Montell C, Montell D Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2024; 121(27):e2400964121.

PMID: 38917005 PMC: 11228485. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2400964121.

Preference of position in the proximity of various sugars revealed by location analysis of Drosophila melanogaster.

Kato H, Nakagawa H, Ishizaki C, Tomita J, Kume K Sci Rep. 2024; 14(1):11285.

PMID: 38760389 PMC: 11101431. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-61457-w.

Metabolic and neurobehavioral disturbances induced by purine recycling deficiency in .

Petitgas C, Seugnet L, Dulac A, Matassi G, Mteyrek A, Fima R Elife. 2024; 12.

PMID: 38700995 PMC: 11068357. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.88510.

References

Sauer S, KINKELIN M, Herrmann E, kaiser W . The dynamics of sleep-like behaviour in honey bees. J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol. 2003; 189(8):599-607. DOI: 10.1007/s00359-003-0436-9. View

Donlea J, Ramanan N, Shaw P . Use-dependent plasticity in clock neurons regulates sleep need in Drosophila. Science. 2009; 324(5923):105-8. PMC: 2850598. DOI: 10.1126/science.1166657. View

Birman S . Arousal mechanisms: speedy flies don't sleep at night. Curr Biol. 2005; 15(13):R511-3. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2005.06.032. View

Yin J, Wallach J, Del Vecchio M, Wilder E, Zhou H, Quinn W . Induction of a dominant negative CREB transgene specifically blocks long-term memory in Drosophila. Cell. 1994; 79(1):49-58. DOI: 10.1016/0092-8674(94)90399-9. View

Gilestro G . Video tracking and analysis of sleep in Drosophila melanogaster. Nat Protoc. 2012; 7(5):995-1007. DOI: 10.1038/nprot.2012.041. View

Shaw P, Cirelli C, Greenspan R, Tononi G . Correlates of sleep and waking in Drosophila melanogaster. Science. 2000; 287(5459):1834-7. DOI: 10.1126/science.287.5459.1834. View

Hendricks J, Finn S, Panckeri K, Chavkin J, Williams J, Sehgal A . Rest in Drosophila is a sleep-like state. Neuron. 2000; 25(1):129-38. DOI: 10.1016/s0896-6273(00)80877-6. View

Cirelli C, Bushey D . Sleep and wakefulness in Drosophila melanogaster. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2008; 1129:323-9. PMC: 2715168. DOI: 10.1196/annals.1417.017. View

van Swinderen B, Andretic R . Dopamine in Drosophila: setting arousal thresholds in a miniature brain. Proc Biol Sci. 2011; 278(1707):906-13. PMC: 3049062. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010.2564. View

10.

Rolls A, Colas D, Adamantidis A, Carter M, Lanre-Amos T, Heller H . Optogenetic disruption of sleep continuity impairs memory consolidation. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011; 108(32):13305-10. PMC: 3156195. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1015633108. View

11.

Zimmerman J, Raizen D, Maycock M, Maislin G, Pack A . A video method to study Drosophila sleep. Sleep. 2008; 31(11):1587-98. PMC: 2579987. DOI: 10.1093/sleep/31.11.1587. View

12.

Lebestky T, Chang J, Dankert H, Zelnik L, Kim Y, Han K . Two different forms of arousal in Drosophila are oppositely regulated by the dopamine D1 receptor ortholog DopR via distinct neural circuits. Neuron. 2009; 64(4):522-36. PMC: 2908595. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2009.09.031. View

13.

Campbell S, Tobler I . Animal sleep: a review of sleep duration across phylogeny. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 1984; 8(3):269-300. DOI: 10.1016/0149-7634(84)90054-x. View

14.

Donelson N, Donelson N, Kim E, Slawson J, Vecsey C, Huber R . High-resolution positional tracking for long-term analysis of Drosophila sleep and locomotion using the "tracker" program. PLoS One. 2012; 7(5):e37250. PMC: 3352887. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0037250. View

15.

Griffith L . Neuromodulatory control of sleep in Drosophila melanogaster: integration of competing and complementary behaviors. Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2013; 23(5):819-23. PMC: 3783581. DOI: 10.1016/j.conb.2013.05.003. View

16.

Kottler B, Bao H, Zalucki O, Imlach W, Troup M, van Alphen B . A sleep/wake circuit controls isoflurane sensitivity in Drosophila. Curr Biol. 2013; 23(7):594-8. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.02.021. View

17.

Tononi G, Cirelli C . Sleep and synaptic homeostasis: a hypothesis. Brain Res Bull. 2003; 62(2):143-50. DOI: 10.1016/j.brainresbull.2003.09.004. View

18.

Andretic R, Shaw P . Essentials of sleep recordings in Drosophila: moving beyond sleep time. Methods Enzymol. 2005; 393:759-72. DOI: 10.1016/S0076-6879(05)93040-1. View

19.

van Alphen B, van Swinderen B . Drosophila strategies to study psychiatric disorders. Brain Res Bull. 2011; 92:1-11. DOI: 10.1016/j.brainresbull.2011.09.007. View

20.

van Alphen B, Yap M, Kirszenblat L, Kottler B, van Swinderen B . A dynamic deep sleep stage in Drosophila. J Neurosci. 2013; 33(16):6917-27. PMC: 3670110. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0061-13.2013. View